Edit File: Debugging.Authentication.txt
Debugging Authentication ======================== The most important thing to do is to set 'auth_debug=yes', and preferrably also 'auth_debug_passwords=yes'. After that you'll see in the logs exactly what dovecot-auth is doing, and that should help you to fix the problem. PLAIN SASL mechanism -------------------- With IMAP and POP3 it's easy to log in manually using the IMAP's LOGIN command or POP3's USER and PASS commands (see <TestInstallation.txt> and <TestPop3Installation.txt> for details), but with SMTP AUTH you'll need to use PLAIN authentication mechanism, which requires you to build a base64-encoded string in the correct format. The PLAIN authentication is also used internally by both IMAP and POP3 to authenticate to dovecot-auth, so you see it in the debug logs. The PLAIN mechanism's authentication format is: <authorization ID> NUL <authentication ID> NUL <password>. Authorization ID is the username who you want to log in as, and authentication ID is the username whose password you're giving. If you're not planning on doing a <master user login> [Authentication.MasterUsers.txt], you can either set both of these fields to the same username, or leave the authorization ID empty. Encoding with mmencode ---------------------- printf(1) and mmencode(1) should be available on most Unix or GNU/Linux systems. (If not, check with your distribution. GNU coreutils includes printf(1), and metamail includes mmencode(1). In Debian, mmencode is called mimencode(1).) ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- $ printf 'username\0username\0password' | mmencode dXNlcm5hbWUAdXNlcm5hbWUAcGFzc3dvcmQ= ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- This string is what a client would use to attempt PLAIN authentication as user "username" with password "password." With ''auth_debug_passwords=yes', it would appear in your logs. Decoding with mmencode ---------------------- You can use mmencode -u to interpret the encoded string pasted into stdin as follows: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- # mmencode -u bXl1c2VybmFtZUBkb21haW4udGxkAG15dXNlcm5hbWVAZG9tYWluLnRsZABteXBhc3N3b3Jk<CR> myusername@domain.tldmyusername@domain.tldmypassword<CTRL-D> # ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- You should see the correct user address (twice) and password. The null bytes won't display. Encoding with Perl ------------------ Unfortunately, mmencode on FreeBSD chokes on "\0". As an alternate, if you have MIME::Base64 on your system, you can use a perl statement to do the same thing: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'print encode_base64("myusername\@domain.tld\0myusername\@domain.tld\0mypassword");' ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- As mmencode -u doesn't encounter any "\0" you can still do: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'print encode_base64("myusername\@domain.tld\0myusername\@domain.tld\0mypassword");' | mmencode -u ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- to check that you have encoded correctly. Encoding with Python -------------------- With python you can do: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- python -c "import base64; print(base64.encodestring('myusername@domain.tld\0myusername@domain.tld\0mypassword'));" ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- (This file was created from the wiki on 2018-02-28 04:42)